Australia

The Sydney Morning Herald headline is “‘I felt like an animal’: Father humiliated after being dragged from Jetstar flight.” The word father and his one year old son are mentioned twice. They quote the man at length and a passenger in a very supportive way, e.g. “At no stage was he being verbally or physically aggressive towards anyone”.

They say the AFP “allege” that Malou became verbally and physically aggressive, and that three officers suffered minor injuries.

They say he and his lawyer are 'fighting' charges rather than contesting them. They talk about a best-case scenario and mean that, from the mans perspective the best case is the charges being dismissed or him being found innocent.

News.com.au headline is “Video shows dramatic arrest after man allegedly assaults AFP officers aboard plane.” The word father is not used and nor is son, unless you count “imprisonment”. The story is mainly from the perspective of the AFP who got no quotes in the SMH article but are quoted at length here, e.g. they have “no tolerance for poor behaviour in our airports or on aircraft“.

The word allege is only used in the headline and the story confident asserts that “Three AFP officers sustained minor injuries during the incident.”

The same witness that the SMH quoted as saying that at no stage was he verbally aggressive is now quoted as saying “It just escalated so fast. It went from like just this argument with staff to this guy screaming at the top of his lungs being Tasered”.

The theme of the first article is that the poor guy got tasered and might go to jail for simply wanting to sit next to his one year old son. The second one is sorry for the AFP who have to deal with screaming unreasonable people who can't follow the law like everyone else.

They chose an emotional angle and reported from that perspective, rather than just being neutral. Is that what people want from their news? Not facts but an emotional response?